A2 · Elementary
10 min
politicshistoryinternational relationsmiddle east
El Presidente Kurdo: Poder, Historia y el Irak de Hoy
The Kurdish President: Power, History, and Iraq Today
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Elementary level — perfect for beginners building confidence.
So, while everyone's been watching Islamabad and Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz, something actually pretty significant happened in Baghdad this week.
Iraq elected a new president.
Sí.
Yes.
El parlamento elige al nuevo presidente.
The parliament elects the new president.
Se llama Nizar Amidi.
His name is Nizar Amidi.
Two hundred and twenty-seven votes to fifteen.
That's not an election, that's a formality.
But formalities in Iraqi politics are never just formalities, and I want to dig into why.
Bueno, mira.
Well, look.
El presidente de Irak es siempre kurdo.
The president of Iraq is always Kurdish.
Siempre.
Always.
Right, and that is the thing I want to explain to listeners, because it sounds strange.
It's not random.
It's a deal.
A very deliberate, very fragile deal that was built after 2003.
Es que Irak tiene tres grupos grandes.
The thing is, Iraq has three big groups.
Los árabes chiítas, los árabes sunitas y los kurdos.
Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds.
And after Saddam fell, the question was: how do you hold a country together when those three groups have spent decades, in some cases centuries, not trusting each other?
The answer the Americans and the Iraqis came up with was this power-sharing formula.
The Shia get the prime minister, the Sunnis get the speaker of parliament, and the Kurds get the presidency.
Sí.
Yes.
Un trabajo para cada grupo.
One job for each group.
Es el sistema.
That's the system.
There's actually a word for it in Arabic: muhasasa.
It basically means apportionment, dividing the spoils.
And I covered it in the early days after the invasion.
There were people who thought it was brilliant, and people who thought it was a recipe for disaster.
A ver, el sistema tiene problemas.
Look, the system has problems.
Pero sin el sistema, Irak no existe.
But without the system, Iraq doesn't exist.
That is a strong claim and I actually think you might be right.
I mean, the alternative to this awkward, transactional, everyone-gets-a-piece system was potentially the kind of civil war that nearly happened in 2006 and 2007.
Which was catastrophic.
La verdad es que la presidencia kurda es un símbolo.
The truth is that the Kurdish presidency is a symbol.
No es mucho poder real.
It's not much real power.
Explain that, because listeners might assume the president runs the country.
He doesn't, does he.
No.
No.
En Irak, el primer ministro tiene el poder.
In Iraq, the prime minister has the power.
El presidente es importante, pero diferente.
The president is important, but different.
It's a ceremonial role, largely.
But symbolically enormous.
The first Kurdish president of Iraq was Jalal Talabani, who took office in 2005.
I interviewed him once.
He was this extraordinary figure, a guerrilla fighter turned statesman, and he understood exactly what that moment meant historically.
Bueno, Talabani es del PUK.
Well, Talabani is from the PUK.
Amidi también es del PUK.
Amidi is also from the PUK.
Es el partido de los kurdos del sur.
It's the party of the southern Kurds.
Right, so for listeners: there are two main Kurdish political parties in Iraq.
The PUK, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, based in Sulaymaniyah.
And the KDP, Kurdistan Democratic Party, based in Erbil.
They are rivals.
They actually fought a civil war against each other in the 1990s, which most people in the West have completely forgotten about.
Sí, los kurdos no son un grupo simple.
Yes, the Kurds are not a simple group.
Tienen política propia.
They have their own politics.
Tienen diferencias.
They have differences.
Here's what gets me.
Amidi beat a candidate from the KIU, the Kurdistan Islamic Union, 227 to 15.
That margin.
That tells you the Iraqi parliament had basically already decided before anyone voted.
Which raises a real question about what elections mean in this context.
Mira, en Irak los partidos hablan antes.
Look, in Iraq the parties talk first.
El voto es el final del proceso, no el principio.
The vote is the end of the process, not the beginning.
That's actually a really elegant way to put it.
The negotiation happens in the rooms we don't see.
The parliament vote is basically the press conference announcing the deal.
Es que Irak necesita estabilidad ahora.
The thing is, Iraq needs stability now.
La región tiene mucha guerra.
The region has a lot of war.
That context is important.
Iran and the US just fought a war.
Iraq sits right between them, literally.
It has Iranian-backed militias operating inside its borders.
It hosts American troops.
It exports oil through the Gulf.
For Baghdad, a quiet presidential election is almost an act of survival.
Irak tiene vecinos muy difíciles.
Iraq has very difficult neighbors.
Irán, Siria, Turquía.
Iran, Syria, Turkey.
La política es siempre complicada.
Politics is always complicated.
I spent time in Baghdad in 2004 and again in 2008, and what struck me both times was how many overlapping games were being played simultaneously.
Iraqi politics, Iranian influence, American pressure, Kurdish interests, tribal dynamics.
It was like watching ten chess games on the same board.
La verdad es que los kurdos son muy buenos en ese juego.
The truth is that the Kurds are very good at that game.
Tienen práctica.
They have practice.
Thirty million Kurds, no state of their own, divided between four countries: Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran.
Every one of those countries has, at various points, tried to suppress Kurdish identity.
And yet Kurdish political culture has survived and, in northern Iraq at least, actually thrived.
That is an extraordinary thing.
Bueno, los kurdos de Irak tienen su región autónoma.
Well, the Kurds of Iraq have their autonomous region.
Tienen gobierno propio.
They have their own government.
Es diferente.
It's different.
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the KRI, it functions almost like a separate state.
It has its own parliament, its own security forces, the Peshmerga, its own flag, its own airports.
But it's still technically part of Iraq, and that tension between autonomy and full independence has been at the heart of Kurdish politics for decades.
En 2017, los kurdos votan por la independencia.
In 2017, the Kurds vote for independence.
Pero no pasa nada.
But nothing happens.
Todo el mundo dice no.
Everyone says no.
That referendum was one of the most stunning political moments I've watched from a distance.
Ninety-three percent voted yes for independence.
And then Baghdad, Tehran, Ankara, Washington, all of them essentially told the Kurds: doesn't matter.
And the Kurds had to back down.
I remember thinking at the time, that must have been a devastating thing to absorb.
A ver, por eso la presidencia de Irak es importante para los kurdos.
Look, that's why the Iraqi presidency matters to the Kurds.
Es reconocimiento.
It's recognition.
Es respeto.
It's respect.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
After 2017, after watching independence slip away, holding the presidency is a way of saying: we are here, we are part of this country, and we cannot be ignored.
It's not nothing.
Mira, Amidi es del PUK.
Look, Amidi is from the PUK.
Eso es importante para el balance entre los dos partidos kurdos.
That's important for the balance between the two Kurdish parties.
The PUK versus KDP rivalry.
So the PUK keeps the presidency.
Does that shift power between those two parties, or is it more about Baghdad versus Erbil versus Sulaymaniyah?
Es que el KDP tiene el poder en Erbil.
The thing is, the KDP has power in Erbil.
El PUK tiene el poder en Sulaymaniyah.
The PUK has power in Sulaymaniyah.
Los dos necesitan el acuerdo.
Both need the agreement.
So it's a balancing act within a balancing act.
The Kurds have to present a unified front in Baghdad while managing their own internal rivalries.
That is genuinely complicated diplomacy, and most of the world has no idea it's happening.
Bueno, ahora Irak tiene presidente nuevo.
Well, now Iraq has a new president.
Pero los problemas grandes no cambian.
But the big problems don't change.
Right.
Corruption is still enormous.
Unemployment.
Basic services.
The militias that operate outside government control.
And the giant question of what happens to Iraq in a post-war Middle East, because the regional map is shifting right now in ways that nobody can fully predict.
La verdad es que Irak quiere paz con todos.
The truth is that Iraq wants peace with everyone.
Con Irán, con Estados Unidos, con todos.
With Iran, with the United States, with everyone.
That is Iraq's fundamental foreign policy position.
Strategic ambiguity, if you want to be diplomatic about it.
Playing both sides, if you're being less diplomatic.
But honestly, given where they sit geographically, it's hard to blame them.
Mira, si Irak elige un lado, tiene un enemigo grande.
Look, if Iraq chooses a side, it has one big enemy.
Es mejor no elegir.
It's better not to choose.
The extraordinary thing is that Iraq has actually managed to maintain that position through some of the most volatile years in the region's modern history.
The ISIS crisis.
The proxy wars.
The Iranian-American tensions.
Being the pivot point between hostile powers is exhausting, but Baghdad has somehow kept the country mostly together.
Sí.
Yes.
Irak existe todavía.
Iraq still exists.
Con todos sus problemas, existe.
With all its problems, it exists.
And that's the thing people forget.
In 2006, in 2014, there were serious analysts who said Iraq was going to fragment, just split into three countries along sectarian lines.
It didn't.
Imperfectly, painfully, expensively, it stayed together.
And this election, this quiet, lopsided, pre-negotiated election, is in a strange way a sign of that.
Bueno, para el mundo Irak es petróleo y guerra.
Well, for the world Iraq is oil and war.
Pero Irak también es historia, cultura, política.
But Iraq is also history, culture, politics.
Look, I've said this before and I'll keep saying it.
Mesopotamia.
Baghdad was the intellectual capital of the world for centuries.
The Abbasid Caliphate, the House of Wisdom.
The reduction of that country to a single news category, which is usually conflict, is one of the great journalistic failures of my lifetime.
So I'm glad we talked about this one today.
Sí.
Yes.
Irak tiene un presidente nuevo.
Iraq has a new president.
El mundo continúa.
The world continues.
Y nosotros aprendemos español.
And we learn Spanish.
We learn Spanish.
And maybe, just a little bit, we learn Iraq too.
That's it for today.
Nizar Amidi, new president of Iraq, and a country that keeps defying the predictions made about it.
See you next time.